Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín is an Irish writer. His novel Brooklyn (2008) was Costa novel of the year, and his short-story collection The Empty Family has been shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor prize. In 2006 he was appointed to the Arts Council in Ireland, and he is currently Leonard Milberg lecturer in Irish letters at Princeton University

JK Rowling enjoyed the 'liberating experience' of writing as Robert Galbraith. We asked five novelists to try their hand at a piece of crime writing, and to come up with a pseudonym. Can you work out who's who?

Writers often worry about the dangers of outside influence, but what about the non-literary inspirations they are far more comfortable admitting to? Andrew O'Hagan talks to six novelists about their passion for a second artform

She is the most famous mother in history, yet her story is unknown. A new novel voices the grief-filled thoughts of Mary, as she pieces together the events that led to the death of her son, Jesus. Its writer, Colm Tóibín, describes the origins of the book. Read an extract here

To mark Bloomsday, 16 June, the date Joyce first walked out with his wife to be in 1904 - the year he began his collection of stories, Dubliners – Colm Tóibín revisits the city that has become a sacred place to Joyce lovers

The number of people living alone has skyrocketed. What is driving the phenomenon, asks Eric Klinenberg. And solo dwellers Colm Tóibín, Alex Zane, Carmen Calli and others reflect on life as a singleton

In the third of our Mother's Day short story podcasts, Colm Toibin reads "Song" from his collection Mothers and Sons, which tells of a chance meeting in a pub in County Clare between a long-estranged mother and her son

Growing up, Tóibín was haunted by the stories of previous generations, in particular his mother's thwarted literary aspirations. He explores the relationships – inspiring, rivalrous, Oedipal – between authors and their parents, from WB Yeats to VS Naipaul